Welcome to my Feral DPS Guide and FAQ! The guide is separated into three parts: a "crash course" section that has all you need to know to pick up feral and be successful, an advanced section for those that want to improve their game to the absolute max, and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section.

This guide is currently up to date for Warlords of Draenor launch (patch 6.0.3).

If you have any questions or comments on the content provided in this guide, feel free to leave a post and let me know!

In general, you should aim to waste as little energy or combo points to overcapping as possible.

On multiple targets: Add in maintaining Thrash, maintain Rake on as many targets as possible, and use Swipe in place of Shred. Swipe is extremely weak, and as such you should only use it when you have all of your bleeds, including Rake, rolling on all of the targets, or if there is a very large amount of targets that will die before you can DoT them.

Uptimes

First off, in Warlords of Draenor all damage over time effects now have a mechanic called Pandemic. Pandemic allows you to carry over up to 30% of the base duration of the new effect from the old one's duration. For example, if you apply a Rake to a target that has a Rake with 4 seconds remaining already on it, the duration of the new Rake will be 15 (base duration) + 4 (remaining duration, <= 30% of 15) = 19 seconds. It is important to take advantage of this mechanic for optimal DPS, the main takeaway being that all DoTs can be refreshed as soon as they have <= 30% of the base duration remaining. The sooner you reapply a DoT, the less chance you stand of letting it fall off, which means higher uptime and more damage. This mechanic allows for significantly easier maintenance of our bleeds and Savage Roar compared to 5.4.

Feral has 4 (de)buffs it should maintain for optimal DPS:

Savage Roar: This should be your #1 concern. When Savage Roar is down or about to end, the only thing you should cast is Savage Roar (or if you don't have any combo points, get one then Savage Roar). If you do this, you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting 99% or higher uptime on it, which is what you should aim for.

Savage Roar's pandemic threshold is a bit weird because of the specifics of the mechanic, but just keep in mind that when you're applying a 5 combo point roar you can refresh as soon as 12.6 seconds. The threshold is lower if you're applying a fewer combo point roar, but generally you shouldn't be applying a roar of less than 5 combo points unless is your current roar is about to run out (~3 seconds or less, roughly).

Rake: You should have this up near 100% of the time just like Savage Roar. Its a CP generator that just costs energy, so when Rake is down or about to end just swap a single Shred out for Rake. Simple. Rake has a Pandemic threshold of 4.5 seconds, so refresh it as soon as its remaining duration reaches that threshold.

Rip: This costs energy and combo points so this is where maintenance starts to get a little bit complicated. You always want to cast it with 5 combo points and should aim to have its uptime as high as possible. 90%+ is good, but close to 95% is ideal (given you have full uptime on the target). Rip has a Pandemic threshold of 7.2 seconds, so refresh it as soon as its remaining duration reaches that threshold.

Thrash: If you’re attacking more than one target you generally want to keep this up all the time. The more targets, the more important it is, so when you're fighting a large number of targets this should be your top priority after Savage Roar. Thrash has a Pandemic threshold of 4.5 seconds, so refresh it as soon as its remaining duration reaches that threshold.

In Warlords of Draenor, using Thrash on a single target is no longer a significant gain. At level 90 it is a small gain due to the higher levels of mastery available with Siege of Orgrimmar, but at level 100 the gain becomes of no significance and is not worth bothering with. In both cases, if there are secondary or tertiary targets who are useful to damage but not a priority Thrash can be maintained with little to no damage loss to the primary target.

Cooldowns

As a feral druid you have two main cooldowns: Tiger's Fury and Berserk; with Incarnation being a third if you choose to spec into it. Tiger’s Fury should be used as close to every 30 seconds as you possibly can; think of it as more of a part of your rotation than a cooldown. It is a very rare occasion where you would consider not using it on cooldown as long as you have something to attack, basically the only time you do this is if you know there’s a big pack of adds about to spawn and you know your TF won’t line up to burst on them unless you save it for it.

Berserk is your big cooldown. It should always be used with Tiger’s Fury, the only exception being if Tiger’s Fury won’t be off cooldown again before the encounter is over. If you specialize into Incarnation, you should generally always use it together with Berserk.

You can use a macro like this to trigger Berserk with your Tiger’s Fury (you can add racial cooldowns, too):

There are too many different scenarios of gear, encounters, and talents to describe every possible gearing scenario, but I can emphasize on some major points. In general, stat priority for Patchwerk-style encounters will look something like this for all talent combinations:Crit > Multistrike >= Versatility >= Mastery > HasteIn any situation with multiple targets or reduced target uptime, the priority tends to shift to something like the following:Mastery > Crit > Multistrike >= Versatility > Haste

It is important to consider that a true Patchwerk-style scenario is relatively rare compared to add fights, AoE fights, and council fights . Often these sorts of encounters still put significant emphasis on single target damage during parts of the encounter so it is also unwise to completely forsake Crit for Mastery. In general, the best gearing strategy is:Crit > Mastery > Multistrike >= Versatility > Hastethis sort of setup will sacrifice a small portion of your single target damage to become close to proficient as possible in multi-target scenarios.

Here's an example of the sort of single target damage loss I'm talking about with profiles in full dungeon blues. This gap actually gets smaller at high item levels because there's less gear to choose from, so the difference in stats isn't as significant.

Of course, it should go without saying that this suggestion should not be followed blindly, and you should pickup any spare pieces you can get your hands on for the sake of selecting the right gear for the right situation.

Finally, while if you want the most accurate weights possible you should really simulate your own character, here are some example stat weights. These are generated with a character in full T17 normal gear using the 3 different level 100 talents in 3 different scenarios: Patchwerk, 2 target Council-style fight, and HecticAddCleave (a SimulationCraft fight style similar to Horridon from Throne of Thunder).

In Warlords of Draenor, both and enchants and gems are a much scarcer modification to worry about compared to previous expansions and your selection is very plentiful. For enchants you can pick between most any stat you want, and for gems socket bonuses are gone and all sockets are now prismatic. Simply put, in the vast majority situations you should use these customizations to stack as much Critical Strike rating as possible; this means Mark of the Thunderlord for your weapon enchant, flat crit enchants for your other slots, and Greater Critical Strike Taladites in any sockets you happen to acquire.

If progressing on a multi-target focused encounter (as described in the previous section), you may instead consider stacking Mastery rating via Mark of the Bleeding Hollow, flat mastery enchants, and Greater Mastery Taladites. This will likely be pretty expensive to do early on in the expansion.

Last edited by aggixx on Mon Sep 09, 2013 6:09 pm, edited 27 times in total.

For level 60 talents, Incarnation is the all around stronger choice. Soul of the Forest is an alternative for players who would prefer a passive option but is weaker in almost every regard. For level 100 talents, Bloodtalons is generally the highest DPS option but Claws of Shirvallah is a good option for those that prefer a simpler rotation. Lunar Inspiration is great for sustain multitarget (eg: "Council" fights) but should otherwise be avoided. Most players will want to use Glyph of Savage Roar for the free Savage Roar on pull and either Glyph of Cat Form or Glyph of the Ninth Life for survivability (depending on the encounter). The third glyph slot is relatively open and can be used for whatever is appropriate.

Glyph of Savage Roar and Glyph of Savagery: These two glyphs are mutually exclusive but everybody should use at least one or the other. If you're struggling keeping Savage Roar active (or for levelling or similar activities with high downtime) then Savagery is a good choice but is otherwise intended to be a damage loss. If you're not interested in using Savagery you should take Savage Roar as it is one of the few glyphs we have that gives us a damage benefit, and a rather nice one too. Savagery's damage loss is pretty small (around 4% at most, depending on talents) but finds some optimal use in situations where the druid has a plentiful number of targets to apply Rip to.

Glyph of Cat Form and Glyph of the Ninth Life: Another exclusive set of glyphs where everybody should have at least one. Cat Form grants 20% increased healing taken, and Ninth Life gives 10% damage reduction; use whichever seems more appropriate for the encounter. If in doubt, go with Cat Form.

Last edited by aggixx on Mon Sep 09, 2013 6:09 pm, edited 18 times in total.

"Best in Slot" lists in general are pretty arbitrary in Warlords; there's just too many factors between gear randomness & source, and stat situationality for there to be one true and obtainable list of items. Instead these lists should be considered as something that provides a framework of what items to look for.

The following is a 1 trinket comparison; "baseline" is a profile with no trinkets equipped and every other profile has only the trinket it is named after. This is a Patchwerk-style simulation so mastery trinkets are undervalued in most practical contexts.

Snapshotting & Clipping

Bleeds use the damage multipliers you had at the time of application for the whole duration of the bleed (called “snapshotting“); specifically, both the damage modifiers from Savage Roar and Tiger's Fury are snapshotted.

There are three scenarios where "clipping" a bleed (refreshing it earlier than you normally would) can be a damage gain:

A bleed is accidentally applied without Savage Roar: If the bleed isn't benefitting from Savage Roar then you're missing out on a lot of damage and it should be clipped as soon as possible.

You can apply a 15% stronger Rake during Tiger's Fury: The cost to reapply a Rake is fairly negligible, and over the duration of that Rake you will net more damage than you would if you use a Shred instead.

You can apply a 15% stronger Rip during Tiger's Fury and the target is at or below 25% health: When you refresh Rip on a target that has less than 25% health with Ferocious Bite the damage multiplier on the Rip is maintained when it is refreshed. This means you should aim to stack both Savage Roar and Tiger's Fury (and also Bloodtalons if you are specialized in it) onto your execute Rip as those modifiers will add up to a lot of extra damage over the last few minutes of the encounter.

While bleed clipping is certainly something that can be tracked manually, you may find it helpful to use a WeakAura or similar addon to track snapshotting information for you.

Late Refresh

When a bleed that has a higher snapshotted damage multiplier is about to end, it can be a small gain to let that bleed tick out instead of immediately refreshing it at the Pandemic threshold.

For example, lets say you have a Rake on the target that was applied with Tiger's Fury and it is now down to 4.5 seconds remaining. If you were to refresh it at exactly 4.5s (Rake's Pandemic threshold) then the 4.5 seconds of the Rake that is added to the new Rake benefits from the modifiers at the time the new Rake was applied, not the old one. If you instead wait until the 3.0s mark (or even until 0 seconds), this allows Tiger's Fury's damage multiplier to take effect for 1 or 2 additional ticks that it would not have otherwise.

Now of course you should be very careful about how you take advantage of this. If delaying the reapplication of the bleed causes the bleed to drop for more than a fraction of a second, then all the damage gained is lost and you would've been better off refreshing normally. This generally it is not a method you should apply with high latency, when you're about to leave the target, or just in general when there's a lot going on and you don't have the attention to devote to such a trivial gain.

Last edited by aggixx on Tue Sep 10, 2013 1:31 am, edited 11 times in total.

For questions about changes in 6.0, please see Alaron's post here. I won't be covering that information as it would just be regurgitating the same things he wrote.

Which trinket should I use? Should I break my set bonus? etc.

In most cases the answer to your question will be specific to your own character and you'll have to determine the answer yourself using SimulationCraft (check the next section in this FAQ for information on how to do this).

If you're having troubles getting one of these programs to work, feel free to post your question in this thread and someone may help you out. If you do ask for help, make sure you include a link to your armory (or character name and realm)! If you don't do this, 90% of the time we won't be able to tell you the answer for sure.

How can I simulate my character?

You'll have to download and install SimulationCraft, a free open source WoW combat simulator. There's a great starters guide for getting the program setup and basics on how to use it here, and there's also a guide for how to do some basic comparisons by Mendenbarr here.

Raffy also created a tool called Catus specifically designed for feral druids, and while it is currently is not operational for Warlords of Draenor it may be an option in the future.

Last edited by aggixx on Mon Sep 09, 2013 11:22 pm, edited 14 times in total.

I have a question though. i see that you have listed the stat weights for each last teir skill. Currently i use a dual spec of DoC and the other for HotW.

I have been looking for a way to get Askmrrobot to work in my favor. Because it is wrong it does make me gem all weird. So Can i actually use these stat weights for that? and if not (which i will try to do tonight after work)

Xube,You can plug those weights into Mr. Robot. The only thing I hate about that is to get hit/exp capped gauranteed, you have to weight those so high it looks ridiculous. I usually put a 15.0 weight on hit/exp, otherwise it likes to keep me just below cap.

Wowreforge.com is way better for doing what you are looking for. They have options (on by default) for you to reach stat caps for any type you want. If you want to reforge your haste for a specific level, just put it in the box, and you are set. If you are in Feral Spec, you just go with the defaults.

AskMrRobot is a great gear optimization tool but the reforge engine behind it is admittedly weak (edit: This is no longer the case, feel free to use it to your heart's content). While its suggestions for gemming and enchanting will be spot on (given you're using the correct weights) I much prefer to use WoWReforge or ReforgeLite for reforges.

But yes, if you just throw those stat weights into any of those 3 tools you should get pretty accurate results. Keep in mind that weights for your character might be a bit different than weights in best in slot gear, but at the moment it doesn't change things up significantly so you should be able to use these no problem.

Thanks for this guide, and responses! Your answers match SimCraft, with various trinket combinations. For my gear it looks like Searing Words & Relic put me at about 82.9k, and Relic & Jade Bandit Figurine give me 82.8k. Looks like. Now to get the $$ for a relic!

I am a bit confused about the stat weights and was hoping you could help me out there.What was the Tier 4 talent used to gain the stat values? Or are the simulations made with only Tier 6 talents?, and if they are made with only the Tier 6 talents, wouldn't the tier 4 talent choice influence the stat values?

I have a couple of questions. How do you compare talents and trinkets in SimC, getting those bar charts up? Also, is there any good or usable character planners out there, like chardev used to be?

It's just a screenshot + crop of the graph on the HTML report spit out by SimC. For character planning I believe CharDev still works although I could be wrong, but you can also do the same thing with AskMrRobot.

Irbis wrote:Thank you for your work.

I am a bit confused about the stat weights and was hoping you could help me out there.What was the Tier 4 talent used to gain the stat values? Or are the simulations made with only Tier 6 talents?, and if they are made with only the Tier 6 talents, wouldn't the tier 4 talent choice influence the stat values?

Sorry, I had it in the description at some point. They are all done with Soul of the Forest as the other two alternatives tend to be very very situational. And yes, it probably does.